What Google says it takes
For AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google's requirement is that a page be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet. Google says there are no additional requirements or special optimizations, and that site owners do not need AI text files, new machine-readable files, or special schema.org markup. That rules out much of what is sold to firms as AI optimization, including the case for an llms.txt file.
Google also counts AI feature traffic inside the Web search type in Search Console, so it does not appear as its own line.
The checks that matter most
- Crawler accessOpenAI and Perplexity each run a search crawler, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, that decides whether your pages can appear in their answers. See which AI crawlers a firm should allow.
- Snippet settingsGoogle lists nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, and noindex as the controls that limit what it shows from a page, including in AI features. An old setting can quietly keep your text out.
- Titles and headingsEach page names the matter and the place, and each section answers one question.
- Structured dataMarkup that matches what the page visibly says, and nothing more.
Where AI-written pages fit
Google's guidance says generative AI can be useful for research and for adding structure to original content, and that using AI to generate many pages without adding value for users may violate its spam policy on scaled content abuse. For a firm, the common risk is a set of near-identical pages with only the town name changed. The practice-area guides show the pages each practice tends to need instead.
Go deeper
The AI SEO guide for lawyers covers crawlers, controls, site architecture, and measurement in full.
Common questions
Is AI SEO different from regular SEO?
Mostly in emphasis. The foundation is the same. AI SEO pays closer attention to which crawlers can reach a page and how much of it search features are allowed to quote.